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In the Bag: Chinese Ethnic Minority Satchels
 Women of the Sha Yao, a Yao branch living in Jinping County, each
wear a satchel called "Di" in the local dialect. The satchel, called "spring
bag" by the locals, is made of red cloth on one side and blue on the other.
Legend has it that in ancient times a young man and a girl fell in love and the
girl wanted to make nine dishes to treat her lover. But some mischievous young
men played a cruel joke on the poor girl, preventing her from making the dishes.
Unaware of the joke the girl felt ashamed of her failure and her face turned red
and then blue. Finally, she drowned herself in a river. When her lover heard the
news, he also jumped into the river. After their deaths, the two lovers turned
into a rainbow. To immortalize the couple and teach others a lesson, the young
men made a red-and-blue-sided satchel that they carried everywhere.
  De'ang Ethnic Minority
The De'ang people call their satchels "Heba", which are sewn
out of homemade cloth with varying base colors according to different Deang
branches. In the past, the so-called "Black Benglong," "Flowery Benglong" and
"Red Benglong" were named according to costume colors worn by different Deang
branches. Even though different branches have different satchels, all of the
satchels have one thing in common: They are all decorated with a colorful woolen
ball called "Benglong Flower" by the Deang people.
 Yi
Ethnic Minority
Due to a large number of branches and the wide distribution of the Yi people,
their costumes and varieties are the richest of all, featuring satchels of
varied materials, patterns and decorations. Rough statistics show that Yi
satchels fall into the following types:
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Women of the Sha Yao, a Yao branch living in Jinping County, each
wear a satchel called "Di" in the local dialect. The satchel, called "spring
bag" by the locals, is made of red cloth on one side and blue on the other.
Legend has it that in ancient times a young man and a girl fell in love and the
girl wanted to make nine dishes to treat her lover. But some mischievous young
men played a cruel joke on the poor girl, preventing her from making the dishes.
Unaware of the joke the girl felt ashamed of her failure and her face turned red
and then blue. Finally, she drowned herself in a river. When her lover heard the
news, he also jumped into the river. After their deaths, the two lovers turned
into a rainbow. To immortalize the couple and teach others a lesson, the young
men made a red-and-blue-sided satchel that they carried everywhere.
